‘No.’ She shook her head ruefully.
He frowned. ‘That wasn’t an improper suggestion.’ His frown deepened. ‘Why is it I find myself sounding like some Victorian suitor whenever I’m around you?’ he said self-derisively.
‘I have no idea,’ she snapped, not even looking at him as she brushed the snow from her clothing. ‘And the reason I said no was because it won’t be much warmer inside; I haven’t had a chance to light the fire yet,’ she explained drily. ‘It had nothing to do with keeping you out of my home.’
‘In that case, I’ll light the fire while you cook breakfast.’
Breakfast? She had no intention of cooking breakfast for him, this morning or any other morning. But she was already too late to stop him going into the cottage, she realised as he disappeared inside.
By the time she entered he was already shovelling out the dead ashes, laying the fire once he had completed that task. And doing it very professionally, too.
‘That isn’t the first time you’ve done that,’ she admired grudgingly.
He glanced across the room at her, that grin once again in evidence. ‘I don’t live in an apartment in town, Jade,’ he told her softly. ‘I live in a house in Berkshire which can only be called rustic, and I enjoy lighting a fire for myself when I come in from work on long winter evenings. And no, Sara didn’t live there with me,’ he added gently, even as the vision of the couple sitting together in front of the glowing fire sprang into Jade’s mind.
She frowned her consternation. ‘I wish you would stop doing that,’ she bit out resentfully.
‘Reading your mind?’ he sat back on his haunches. ‘I think it’s a measure of our instant rapport,’ he shrugged.
‘We don’t have—’
‘I bet you have eggs and bacon in your fridge just waiting to be cooked for breakfast,’ he lightly interrupted her protest.
‘That isn’t so unusual,’ she scoffed.
‘Mushrooms, too?’ he mocked.
Her cheeks burnt fiery red. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ she said defensively.
‘You had a second helping of them at dinner last night,’ he shrugged.
‘So did you,’ she instantly accused him.
‘Exactly,’ he drawled, his brows raised.
Jade drew in a deep breath, letting it out again in a deep sigh. ‘OK, so we both like mushrooms,’ she admitted defeatedly.
‘And we can have some with our bacon and eggs?’ he requested wistfully.
A grown man, especially one as devastatingly attractive as this one, shouldn’t also have the power to have the appeal of a little boy; it wasn’t fair to the female population! And it was galling to think that even she, someone who had been totally disillusioned about men, should be affected by that appeal.
‘The food was for my lunch,’ she told him waspishly. ‘I don’t usually eat breakfast.’
‘Indulge me,’ he encouraged huskily.
She sighed again. ‘I have the feeling people have been indulging you since you were in your cradle,’ she said disgustedly, already knowing she was going to be another one who did exactly that—as far as the breakfast went, anyway! She defended her actions by telling herself she was hungry and might as well feed him as she was going to cook anyway.
She didn’t wait for David’s reply, turning to go into the kitchen, leaving him to earn his meal by lighting the fire.
It wasn’t until she had the bacon and mushrooms sizzling under the grill and the eggs cooking on the stove that she questioned what her neighbours were going to think about the Range Rover parked in her driveway when they got out of their beds. It would look as if the vehicle had been there all night! After months of living quietly, slowly melding into the community, of remaining completely apart from any gossip that might be circulating, she was probably going to give them the tastiest titbit they had had for months.
‘Why so pensive?’
She hadn’t realised David had entered the tiny kitchen, but she turned at the sound of his voice, grimacing her distress. ‘The locals are going to be full of speculation about the Range Rover being outside the cottage,’ she sighed heavily.
‘I won’t ask if that bothers you,’ David said gently. ‘Because it obviously does. But with the aid of our much-respected headmaster’s wife I’m sure we can come up with a perfectly feasible excuse for my being here this time of the morning.’
‘You must think I’m being ridiculous—’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ he cut in with brisk assurance. ‘I should be one of the first to realise how these misunderstandings are made,’ he added ruefully.
Of course, he had met his beloved Sara through just such a misunderstanding!
‘Don’t look on this as another of those “signs”,’ Jade warned hastily. ‘This is just me being overly cautious.’ And with good reason; the last thing she needed was speculative gossip about her.
‘Let’s eat before the food gets cold,’ he suggested gently, his gaze warm.
She still looked hesitant. ‘As long as you don’t think that I—’
‘I think that Penny can inform everyone—before they ask—that she was the one that was concerned about your welfare out here on your own, after the snowfall last night, and sent me over to check up on you. Early,’ he added with emphasis.
‘Very early,’ she grimaced as they sat side by side at the breakfast bar, which was all the seating arrangement for eating the tiny cottage allowed.
‘Right,’ he nodded, liberally buttering his toast. ‘And while I’m on the subject of your living “out here”,’ he frowned, ‘aren’t you a little too much out on your own for safety?’
The fact that the cottage was situated on its own was one of the things she had found hardest to adapt to when she had first moved here, but now she liked the relative solitude its location provided. ‘The nearest neighbour is only a couple of hundred yards away,’ she answered chidingly.
‘What if you should fall down and hurt yourself?’ David’s frown deepened as if the thought greatly disturbed him.
‘I’m sure I could manage to crawl to the telephone somehow and call for help,’ she drawled mockingly.
He gave her a censorious look. ‘But what if you got trapped somewhere—’
‘Like the coal cellar?’ she taunted, at his melodrama.
‘Exactly,’ he pounced, very agitated now as his imagination worked overtime.
Jade shook her head, calmly forking up some bacon and a mushroom. ‘I don’t have one,’ she informed him lightly before popping the food into her mouth, having worked up quite an appetite during their snowball fight.
David didn’t look convinced. ‘You could accidentally lock yourself in somewhere—’
‘The loo, for example,’ she nodded.
‘Yes. You—’
‘I don’t have a lock on the loo door,’ she sighed, the conversation beginning to irritate her now. ‘Besides, there’s a window,’ she added firmly, determinedly taking another mouthful of her breakfast.
Dark brows rose. ‘Big enough for you to climb out of?’
‘Just about,’ she nodded after some consideration. ‘But not for you to climb in!’ she warned.
He gave her a reproachful look. ‘Do I look the cat-burglar type?’
‘Wellington wouldn’t let you steal him even if you were,’ she returned pertly, trying to introduce levity into the conversation, something he seemed determined she wouldn’t do!
‘Very funny!’ he grimaced, acknowledging her mockery.
‘Talking of Wellington…’ she mused as the cat strolled into the kitchen for his breakfast now that he had decided he had had enough sleep for the night. Jade got up to mix his food. ‘He’s all the protection I need; I’m sure he would run for help if I needed it,’ she drawled before once again sitting down at the breakfast bar beside David.
‘I’m glad you find it amusing—’
‘That’s the whole point. I don’t,’ she cut in with irritable impatience. ‘I don
’t need anyone fussing around me.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Your food’s getting cold,’ she snapped with finality, no longer enjoying the meal herself. She had spent the last year distancing herself from people, and didn’t intend being trapped into a relationship now, even if David Kendrick was one of the nicest men she had ever met.
Nice. Not the dull, uninteresting sort of nice that became boring after a while; he was too unpredictable ever to be that! But he was a truly nice man who cared about others, was concerned for and about them. Cared and was concerned about her.
Which was all the more reason for her not to become involved with him, in any way.
‘Something else for me to remember about you,’ he drawled as he finally picked up his own knife and fork in preparation for eating. ‘You don’t like to feel protected.’
She gave him a frosty look. ‘Protection is one thing; it’s when it curtails your personal freedom that it becomes intrusive.’ She was being too harsh, and she knew it, feeling almost guilty as he gave a disappointed shrug before starting to eat his breakfast.
Jade’s own appetite had deserted her. God, how she wished she dare allow herself the luxury of feeling protected, cosseted and loved. But to do that she would have to allow her defences to drop, and it had been a long and painful process building them up in the first place! Even the slight lapse she had made a few moments ago as she’d tried to banter him out of his concern for her had been a lowering of her defences she dared not repeat. David might begin to think she actually liked him. And that would never do.
She silently dismissed his compliments and thanks for the meal with a shrug of her shoulders, hurriedly clearing away, anxious now to cut his visit short.
David watched her with unruffled amusement, leaning back against one of the kitchen units as she tidied away the crockery he had just finished wiping. Jade’s movements became more and more agitated under his steadily watchful gaze.
‘Finished?’ he enquired casually when Jade could find nothing else to put away.
‘In here,’ she accepted stiffly. ‘But I usually go into town to do my shopping on a Saturday.’
He straightened, taking the keys to the Range Rover out of his denims pocket. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’
Her brows rose at his intention of accompanying her. ‘That wasn’t an invitation.’
‘Mine was,’ he returned easily. ‘How else are you going to get into town?’
‘In my car, of—’ She broke off with a pained groan. Faithful as Cleo was—she had had the Mini six years now without any serious problems with it—she very much doubted the little car would be able to travel in the couple of inches of snow that still covered the roads in this area. If only she had remembered that damned snow before she had mentioned going shopping! ‘I can always leave the shopping until another day now that school has finished for the Christmas holidays,’ she dismissed with bravado.
‘No need,’ David said pleasantly, a determined glint in his eyes. ‘Not when I’m conveniently here to take you. Besides,’ he added before she could protest again, ‘who’s to say the snow will clear in time for you to go “another day"?’
He was right, of course, and she couldn’t go indefinitely without stocking up on food, the lack of storage space at the cottage meaning she never had too much in at one time. And, reliable as Cleo was, she couldn’t expect the tiny car to contend with the roads in this weather. ‘Then I accept your kind invitation,’ she told him stiltedly—both of them knowing she didn’t really have a choice. ‘I’ll just go upstairs and get my coat.’
Damn, damn, damn! Going out to do her weekly shopping had seemed like the ideal way to escape any more of David’s company today without having to be rude and actually ask him to go. Now she had unwittingly put herself in the position of being with him for a couple of hours more at least.
It wasn’t until she got into her bedroom and accidentally caught sight of her reflection in the small dressing-table mirror that she realised her hair was still a silkily loose auburn cloud about her shoulders and her glasses were still conspicuously absent from the bridge of her nose.
Futile as it seemed, she went through the daily ritual of securing her hair and putting on the shield of her dark-rimmed glasses. She would have felt more businesslike in one of her plain skirts and blouses, but the thought of how cold it was outside was enough to keep her in the denims and jumper. She had already spent the last two hours in David’s company dressed like this it was a little late in the day to be worrying about the way both articles of clothing hugged the slenderness of her figure, clearly outlining the gentle curve of her hips and breasts.
David said nothing about the alteration to her hair or the addition of the glasses as she joined him in the tiny lounge a few minutes later, although she knew by the way his dark blue gaze flickered over her that he had noticed the changes in her appearance. Her cheeks instantly warmed.
‘I’ve put enough coal on the fire to last until we get back,’ he told her lightly as he opened the front door for her.
She had noticed the thoughtful action as soon as she came down the stairs. Another one of those ‘nice’ things about David Kendrick that were too dangerous for her peace of mind. And her need for privacy.
But, as if he were well aware now of how even so small an act could make her wary and suspicious, David seemed to deliberately leave her to her own thoughts on the drive into town, putting on an unintrusive cassette to alleviate the silence so that it shouldn’t become too uncomfortable, perfectly relaxed himself as he sat capably behind the wheel of the Range Rover.
This man was worse than dangerous, he was lethal, and it was something she must never forget, despite his seemingly easygoing nature; he was a man determined to have his own way where she was concerned, with honey if he could manage it, but if not, by some other means. He hadn’t become, and remained, successful in a cut-throat world like publishing was today, without learning how to be a survivor!
He remained just as unobtrusively in the background as Jade wandered around the supermarket, pushing the trolley along for her after insisting he could at least do that.
It was worth losing that particular battle just for the pleasure of seeing the head of Empire Publishing trying to control an errant shopping trolley up and down the shop’s aisles—that seemed one battle he was doomed to fail at as he constantly crashed into either the laden shelves or other poor shoppers.
Jade, walking a short distance ahead of him as she perused the shelves, had difficulty containing her mirth as David let out yet another expletive before impatiently righting the trolley on to a straight path—for about two seconds! To give credit where it was due, David was being wonderfully patient, but that didn’t make the whole scene any less funny.
She paused at a stand where a specialised saleslady was trying to market a new cheese spread, giving David time to partially win his battle and catch up with her. The cheese spread didn’t taste as nice as others she had tried in the past, and, smiling a polite refusal at the other woman as she tried to sell her a jar, she turned to continue her shopping.
‘Perhaps your husband would care to try some?’ the woman prompted hastily as she realised she wasn’t about to make a sale after all, despite her avid sales talk.
‘I don’t—’
‘I’d love to,’ David answered the other woman warmly.
Jade turned slowly, just in time to see David pop one of the small crackers smeared with the cheese spread into his mouth.
He chewed it around thoughtfully. ‘Very nice,’ he nodded, turning to Jade, pure devilment in his eyes. ‘Try it again, darling, and see what you think,’ he encouraged softly.
Irritation darkened her eyes; David had no right to deceive the poor saleswoman into thinking they were actually going to buy some of the awful spread, and he certainly had no right to let her go on thinking they were husband and wife! ‘But we aren’t—’
‘Into cheese, I know,’ David completed smoo
thly—and completely incorrectly; he knew damn well she had been about to vehemently deny they were husband and wife. ‘But I think you’ll agree,’ he bestowed a heart-stopping smile on the middle-aged saleslady, ‘that these are delicious.’ He indicated the crackers on the display table.
They were no such thing, and they all knew it, even the other woman looking a little surprised by his enthusiasm. She was obviously only employed on a temporary basis until the product had been introduced to the general public, probably having to try and sell a different product—just as awful as this one!—every week. All the more reason not to lead the poor woman on now.
Jade’s mouth twisted. ‘I don’t think this is one of those occasions, David, when there’s a hidden camera all prepared to get you on film and put you on television next week!’
He grinned, unabashed. ‘Try it again, sweetheart. For me,’ he encouraged throatily.
She would ‘sweetheart’ him right around his—No, she abhorred physical violence, remember, and David’s discoloured eye still showed the signs of her last lapse; she wondered what the saleslady thought of that! Besides, her last lapse had ended up with David announcing he was going to marry her!
She strolled back over to David’s side, giving him a vengeful smile. ‘I just wanted to explain that you aren’t my husband,’ she drawled calmly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the flustered saleswoman apologised for her mistake. ‘I didn’t—I just thought—’
‘I’m sure you aren’t really interested in our living arrangements,’ David cut in lightly. ‘Which reminds me, darling,’ he turned back to Jade, his expression innocent, ‘we ran out of washing-up liquid this morning.’
Her mouth tightened as he neatly turned the tables on her once more. Why was she even bothering to challenge him in this way? It was a foregone conclusion that she would lose.
To give David his due, he did actually purchase a jar of the cheese spread before they left, leaving behind them one satisfied saleslady—even if the jar was likely to go straight in the bin once they got back to the cottage!
The Loving Gift Page 6